Children of Finarfin
by The Otherworlder
Summary: Finarfin's tall, powerful, golden brood brought home a collection of very different spouses. Here are short tales of his relationships with his daughters and sons-in-law.
1. Eldalótë

**Disclaimer: I own nothing; will put everything back after playing!**

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Arafinwë sat alone in the Great Square of Tirion.

It was dark all around him. No star shone in the sky above, no night birds sang, and not a breath of wind stirred. Long hours passed since the poisoning of the Trees, and never had it seem so dark until now. It should not be so dark. They who turned back from their rebellious exodus received their pardon, and they were still many. He was their King.

Yet it mattered not. Arafinwë was all alone.

His people, shocked and distraught, all retreated to their homes to share what comfort there existed with loved ones, yet the High King sat by a fountain that no longer sprouted in the Great Square all alone, his lonesome figure not even casting a reflection upon the still pool beside him, for it was too dark. His father lay dead, his brothers estranged and gone, his wife would not return to Tirion now or in a long time, and his children, his beautiful, valiant, shining children, they all left him without so much as a backward glance.

In the depth of his misery he did not see the slender figure approach him until she was right before him. She knelt down and put a small, white hand on his knee, staring up with pale grey eyes.

"I am sorry, my lord," She whispered, "I failed you. I reasoned, I begged, I shed tears, I used every one of my womanly wiles, to no avail. I could not bring your son and your grandson home. This is the only thing I can do, to turn homeward myself."

"Eldalótë, my child," He murmured, faintly surprised yet not so.

"Will you forgive me?" She spoke again, "For abandoning my husband and child?"

Eldalótë's upturned face looked like a pearly rose faintly gleaming in the starlight. She always seemed a little out of place with the rest of his tall and golden brood. She was a slender, dark songbird in the shadowy boughs surrounded by the eagles of the snowy mountain peak. Even wild, thorny Nerwen was gentle and demure around her sister by marriage, as if fearing she might singe the beautiful but fragile flower. Yet Arafinwë always knew that his fragile-seeming daughter-in-law was in truth the strongest of his valiant children.

He said in a low voice, "What is there to forgive? You did what is right, and you have found the strength to forsake duty, passion, even undying love to do what is right. You alone, Eldalótë, have the strength to do so. What can I even forgive? You have only my deepest respect and love."

"I follow where your noble courage lead, my lord," She took his hand and kissed it gently, "My King."

Arafinwë replied, "Call me not King, my child, for King of our diminished people I may be here in Valinor, yet nothing has changed between us. Are we not the closest of kins?"

Eldalótë sighed, and tears glistened in her eyes. She laid her head in Arafinwë's lap and murmured, "Of course, _atto_."


	2. Amarië

Words came swiftly on the wings of the great eagles, still, by the time Arafinwë arrived at the frozen beaches of Araman, Amarië had already wandered the icy strand for nights and days. She was alone in this bitter, desolate waste, her long golden hair streaming in the wind beyond the confines of her cape. She looked like a wraith of immaterial pale light rather than a being of flesh and blood. Her great horse kept to her side, ever faithful, yet looking every bit as miserable as she was. Arafinwë felt his heart suddenly explode with pain and for a moment he could not breathe.

She glanced at him only very briefly, then she turned back to her brooding, stormy blue eyes fixed on the unseen eastern shore.

Arafinwë spoke softly, "Come, wander this lifeless waste no more, lady, they are gone and it is impossible to follow. I will accompany you to Vaniquetil. You kin and kith look for your return and they are grieved." He did not receive any acknowledgement for a long moment.

"Please, my lady," Arafinwë beseeched once more.

Finally Amarië turned to face him. They stared at each other for a while in a camaraderie of suffering, and at last the Vanya bowed low.

"Forgive my ill manners, Noldoran," Her voice was rough with torment, "I am remiss in my misery, and formality seems especially painful, now of all times. I have long hoped to claim the honor of calling your _atarinya_ one day."

 _You may still call me atarinya_.

Arafinwë almost spoke it out loud, but he stopped himself in time. How could he? Findaráto had condemned himself to an eternity of tears and exile. Amarië did not choose to share it, nor should she endure this endless, loveless void. Their love was fated to die quietly and serenely in the long separation, to be mended by something else, and one day Amarië would look back on this day and her anguish with a faint and smiling wistfulness, with another husband by her side and another new found _father_.

"I would have gone with him!" She exclaimed.

Arafinwë answered, "But you did not, lady, and you must begin your life anew."

"I was not given the choice to go with him!" Amarië cried out with a sudden flare of passion, "Lady Anaire sent me away on errands, and I lingered endlessly by the side of a grieved Yavanna. Had I known, had I only known! Why could words not be sent? It was all too late. Just because I am short a ring and a child I must have no desire to follow him? I should just abandon him and forget him with ease? Why was I denied this choice? Is this the justice of the Valar and the One?!"

Amarië could be so unlike a Vanya at times. She was kind and filled with laughter just like her people, yet in her the Vanyarin steadfastness has turned into an intense feeling that bordered on obstinacy and irreverence. She and Artanis could have been blood sisters in their likeness, many have remarked, and indeed they were nearly sisters. But it was not meant to be.

"Others might say you have been spared this choice," Arafinwë spoke softly, "There will always be times when we would choose but cannot do so. It is not the cruel injustice it appears to be, only the way of the world, ever directed by chance. Yet it is in those choices we can make that we find Eru's justice and our own glory."

"You have chosen, Noldoran, and I marvel at your strength," Amarië said, "Yet what would you know of being denied a choice? You were ever your own master."

Arafinwë answered sadly, "Do you not think I should desire to choose whether to hold a sword at Alqualondë? Do you not think I should desire to spare my children that choice, and to perform whatever deed necessary in their stead, so that their hands are clean of the blood of any kin, whether justly or no? Yet I could not always protect them. They chose to kill and to go; I chose to stay and repent."

The image of his little Artanis bathed in blood and burning with an unholy fury flashed before his eyes once more. It could have been Amarië. What would she have done? It was perhaps meaningless to speculate, for it was as he said, only the choices that were made mattered.

"What would you choose now, my lady?" He asked once more.

Amarië lifted her chin, "With your permission, Sire, I would live in Tirion and I would wait."

Arafinwë inclined his head, "As you wish."

 _Daughter_. He added silently.


	3. Andreth

He would never meet her, not while the world lasts, and a portrait painted by Findaráto was the best thing he could hope for. The lady looks imperfect but utterly captivating under Findaráto's masterful brush. Her hair was colored like the plain earth, but it seemed to burn with an inner fire; her eyes were an ordinary shade of green-grey, but they glittered even on the canvas. Perhaps Findaráto painted her fairer than she was.

"I wish you painted her in her old age, in the throe of mortality," Arafinwë murmured to his son, "Did you know her then? Did Aikanáro?"

Findaráto seemed faintly surprised by this question. He said, "We saw her last when she was ninety-two. She was still in good health then but her hair was white as snow; her eyes were still clear but hidden deep in shadows, for her flesh had withered and her face hollowed with age."

"Yet you remember her as this young sprite, barely more than a child?"

Findaráto looked at the portrait, remembering and choosing his words. At last he answered, "The more I see her grow and age the more these changes disappear from my sight. Perhaps Saelind never looked like this portrait, yet this is how I saw her, and how I will always see her. Aikanáro too, metinks. The first time I saw white in her hair I was shocked and saddened. I tried to console Aikanáro afterward, for I believed him even more grieved, yet he only looked at me as if I were mad. 'I see nothing different in Saelind,' he said."

Arafinwë pondered this in silence for a very long time. He wondered what it is like to see a withered and dying face yet not see it. How does one look beyond mortality—genuine mortality that parts souls forever? He had little dealings with the Secondborn himself, only a few brief encounters with half-wild chieftains during the War of Wrath, and the formal reception of Tuor, champion of Ulmo. Tuor was no Elda yet very near it, for he was given a life in Valinor with his wife and son, yet even then Arafinwë found the immortal man incomprehensible.

"I wish you could have known them," Findaráto murmured.

"Them?"

"Bëor, Andreth, Barahir, Beren—all of them. I wish you could have known them as I have known them, for they are such noble and singular beings. For their sake, I cannot regret leaving Valinor."

Arafinwë gazed at the portrait, and at last he said, "You at least returned, yet I do not think Aikanáro would ever return to me, not while this world lasts and his beloved is beyond the Halls. 'Tis strange, that a soul so fleeting should cast such a long shadow across even the Sundering Sea."

Findaráto now looked faintly startled, "Oh _atar_ , surely you do not blame her…"

"No," Arafinwë spoke quickly, "I would have received her upon the green hill of Tuna with every fanfare and blessing a daughter of Arafinwë deserves, I would have loved her, no matter how strange and otherworldly she seems to me, yet fate would not grant me this honor. This portrait is all I can hope to have."

He looked down once more at the portrait, and Andreth smiled back at him with her unassuming yet glittering bright eyes.

"I know not she whom I lost yet I know all too well that I lost another child."


End file.
